Forecasters: New Mexico should brace for worsening drought
By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
The last three months have been very dry in New Mexico and it's only going to get worse.
That's the word from forecasters with the National Weather Service and other climate experts in the state. They said during a meeting this week that New Mexico reservoirs continue to be far below historical averages and that ranchers are bracing for a winter with little moisture out on the range.
Some snow is expected in the higher elevation on Christmas Eve, but it will be less than the precipitation that has helped to ease drought conditions elsewhere in the West in recent weeks. Parts of California are in line for even more snow, but the latest drought map shows nearly half of the western region is still dealing with the most severe categories of drought.
Andrew Mangham, a senior hydrologist with the weather service in Albuquerque, shared a series of maps that showed chances are good for above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation for the next two weeks, the next month and into April.
"Really the story is we had a dry year that is getting worse and worse as we move through this second La Niña," he said.
The benefits of a decent monsoon over the summer have all but evaporated and most of New Mexico missed out on any meaningful moisture in the fall, Mangham said. The far northern reaches of the state saw some snow earlier this month, but he said New Mexico would need a lot more of that to get snowpack levels closer to normal for this time of year.
Stream flows? Soil moisture levels? Mangham said it's the same story and it doesn't look good heading into the next year.
"Everything is just getting drier," he repeated.
Ranchers say they are feeling the pinch, and farmers who rely on traditional irrigation systems called acequias say they're worried about having water for crops next spring.
Bone dry with winds that make it even drier is how Paula Garcia described the conditions. As head of the New Mexico Acequia Association, she hears firsthand about the challenges from family farms and individual growers.
"Last year, we had some snow in late 2020 and we had a very dry spring with little or no runoff. This year, the past few months are worse. If this continues, we wonder if there will be any snowmelt in the spring," she said.
The association is planning a series of meetings among acequia leaders to talk about the year ahead in terms of sharing observations about the drought, dealing with scarcity and conflicts, and addressing the need for more water-sharing agreements for those areas that will need it most.
In Nara Visa, a small village near the New Mexico-Texas state line, rancher Cliff Copeland talks about the dust and its effects on his cattle. He and other ranchers already had cut back their herds last year due to dry conditions then. Summer rains helped the grasslands recover somewhat so that in combination with smaller herds will help heading into the winter but growing feeds costs are worrisome, he said.
"It's very seldom you go and not get hardly any measurable precipitation this time of year so it's very concerning," he said. "It's possibly devastating and it sure has everyone's attention."
For Copeland, who serves as a regional vice president with the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, doing more with less is a key part of the equation that has helped to keep the family ranch humming for four generations.
"It's part of the evolution," he said. "... So being able to pass this along to the children and grandchildren and sustain our operation as we've done for so long is extremely important to us."
New Mexico governor signs legislation on medical malpractice
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has signed emergency legislation to tweak New Mexico's new law on medical malpractice to head off a possible loss of insurance coverage for some health care providers.
Lujan Grisham's office said she signed the legislation Wednesday and appreciated that the Legislature acted on the issue during a recent special session on redistricting and pandemic relief.
Officials said the new medical malpractice law, which takes effect Jan. 1, needed to be changed so that numerous physician-owned small businesses could keep their insurance coverage and stay open.
A coalition of plaintiffs' lawyers, hospital officials, physicians and patient advocates supported the special session legislation to eliminate questions about legal liability of independent doctors, including surgeons who practice at various hospitals.
The new law taking effect Jan. 1 adjusts New Mexico's caps for legal damages available to people harmed by medical wrongdoing or negligence.
Wage boost for chile workers hangs in the balance, though some say the state could make it happen - Patrick Lohmann, Source NM
Some New Mexico farmers and their employees are bracing for a tough holiday season, many of them left on the hook after being promised a living wage to produce this winter’s red chile crop.
As Source New Mexico’s Patrick Lohmann reports, about $2.2 million in wage subsidies for thousands of workers is sitting unspent at the Department of Agriculture, the casualty of a billion-dollar dispute between Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and some legislators.
Charlie Marquez, a lobbyist for the New Mexico Chile Association, has spent the final days before Christmas trying to squeeze the money out of the agency. He cites previous assurances from lawmakers and a nonbinding analysis from the state Legislative Council Service as reasons that the money can legally be spent now.
The cash is sorely needed by those who perform the back-breaking work of harvesting and processing New Mexico’s beloved crop, he said.
“The state made a commitment to them, and these poor guys, these poor farmers, they bank their life on what they do every year,” Marquez said.
But the Governor’s Office, Agriculture Department and Legislature have all said not one more dime can be spent from the Chile Labor Incentive Program until the Legislature approves it. The earliest that could happen is late next month, when lawmakers meet for the regular legislative session.
The program — aimed at reducing a labor shortage — boosted wages for farmworkers by up to $4.50 an hour, helping people earn up to $19.50 an hour. For many workers who make minimum wage of $10.50 an hour, the program would boost their wage to $15 an hour.
The labor shortage was estimated to be about 45% of the typical number of workers, or about 1,450 people, according to the Governor’s Office.
The governor in August announced the $5 million program for the green chile season, then extended it in November to cover the red chile season. By that point, about $2.8 million had been spent toward wages for about 3,000 workers, and $2.2 million was left. The money came from about $1.7 billion provided to New Mexico via the federal American Rescue Plan Act
But on Dec. 3, N.M. Agriculture Secretary Jeffrey Witte posted a letter to the department’s website, announcing that the program would need to immediately stop, though farmers should still keep records for possible backpay. He cited a state Supreme Court ruling from Nov. 18, one that forbade the governor from spending any more money from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. That responsibility lies with the Legislature, the ruling states.
The Supreme Court issued its ruling in response to a lawsuit, initially filed by Sen. Jacob Candelaria (DTS- Albuquerque) and Sen. Greg Baca (R-Belen), over the governor’s authority to spend the federal money. In early December, Candelaria filed another motion, blasting the Governor’s Office for continuing to spend money out of the fund on to pay back a computer vendor. That money was quickly returned.
Early December is about when the Legislative Finance Committee contacted the Agriculture Department, telling it to stop paying farmers, according to the department.
In the meantime, some farmers are left with their commitments to pay their employees more, said Glen Duggins, a chile farmer and president of the New Mexico Chile Association. They promised their workers better hourly wages, and some of them are honoring that promise even though the state isn’t reimbursing them.
“Farmers are people of their word, and they’re gonna do what they promised,” he said. “It’s just going to make it difficult for the farmer to come up with that extra money. But I suppose we will. We have no choice, really.”
No special session fix
Marquez said he had every expectation until earlier this week that the money would keep flowing to farmers and their employees. He said lawmakers seemed concerned in early December, when he spoke up about the problem at a House committee meeting, and it looked like they would find a fix before the end of the special session.
He said he was reassured that lawmakers were taking the matter seriously. And he spoke to Raul Burciaga, director of the Legislative Council Service, who told him the money was free to be spent now. The service does legal research for the Legislature and drafts legislation.
Burciaga, in an interview with Source New Mexico, stressed that the service did not issue binding legal opinions. He also said the New Mexico Supreme Court could clarify the issue when it issues a more detailed ruling on the matter. But he thinks there is nothing legally preventing the wage boosts to farmers this holiday season.
He said that because it’s his understanding that all $5 million was allocated before the lawsuit began, meaning it was already committed to be spent and not subject to the Supreme Court order. The funding is similar to the $600 million from the American Rescue Plan Act money that went to New Mexico unemployment insurance, Burciaga pointed out. That chunk of cash was never part of the case before the Supreme Court, he said, presumably because that money was also allocated before the lawsuit was initiated.
“My understanding was that those $5 million were allocated before the litigation. That’s all I can say on the record,” Burciaga said. “But we do not issue formal legal opinions.”
That left Marquez, the lobbyist, frustrated that an expert like Burciaga thought the money was free to be spent, but he couldn’t shake it loose. He could seek an opinion from the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, he said, but that would just take more time.
“To me, it’s like, go ahead and pay it out and compensate (the farmers), as was committed to them,” he said. “Because they don’t care about whether it was Legislature or governor.”
Patty Lundstrom, chair of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that even though the Agriculture Department has all of the money for the program, it is still prohibited from spending it. The committee will have to authorize the release of that money when the 30-day session begins Jan. 18, she said.
Nora Sackett, a spokesperson for Gov. Lujan Grisham, said she hopes the Legislature saves the program, which she said was quite successful.
“More than anything we are disappointed that the burden of the Legislature’s request (to stop the spending) falls on the shoulders of New Mexicans already working tirelessly to ensure the world’s supply of our state’s signature crop,” she said. “We certainly hope that the Legislature acts to rectify the situation and follows in the governor’s footsteps to support New Mexico chile growers.”
Did you order your chile ‘Christmas’?
Kristie Garcia, a spokesperson for the Agriculture Department, said about 90% of the red chile harvest was completed in late November, but that the last of the harvest and chile processing — turning it into sauces, powders or other products — was still ramping up. About $1.6 million of the $2.8 million already spent went to employees of processors, she said.
“The chile harvest is coming to an end, so it would be nice to have that money to be able to distribute to growers and processors,” she said.
Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the Agriculture Department spent about $198,000 on farmer worker wages between Nov. 18 and Dec. 3, Garcia said.
Marquez said he believes the reason the Agriculture Department stopped paying out Dec. 3 and not Nov. 18 is because of the additional filing by Candelaria, one that he said had a chilling effect across the executive branch.
Candelaria, in an interview, said he does not believe the lawsuit he filed applies to the chile program.
“In the lawsuit, we did not ask the court to sort of enjoin or stop expenditure of any funds that had already been transferred out prior to Nov. 18,” he said. “So … on its face, it strikes me that this program falls under that kind of exemption to the lawsuit.”
He also said that the Legislature or the governor, if they cared about the program, should have tried to save it before the special session ended last week.
He also said he does not support the Chile Labor Incentive Program, so he’s not all that concerned that his litigation might have stalled it over the holiday season. It’s a failure of industry, he said, that farmworkers don’t make a living wage. It’s not up to the government to subsidize the farm industry for under-paying its workers.
“While I understand it was successful, I don’t think it’s the responsibility of the government to supplement low poverty wages in certain industries,” he said. “If the chile industry needs to get people out in the field, they should pay better wages and give better benefits to their workers.”
New Mexico utility appeals decision on coal power plant -Associated Press
New Mexico's largest electric provider is appealing a recent decision by state regulators to reject a proposal to transfer its shares in a coal-fired power plant that supplies customers in New Mexico and Arizona to a Navajo energy company.
The Public Regulation Commission voted earlier this month against the proposal, saying Public Service Co. of New Mexico didn't specify how the lost power would be replaced. Commissioners also had concerns about investments that the utility sought to recover through bonds that would be paid back by customers.
PNM filed its notice of appeal with the New Mexico Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The utility has argued that the plan would protect customers, trim emissions from its portfolio and strengthen the Navajo Nation's position when it comes to determining the future of the Four Corners Power Plant, which is located on tribal land in northwestern New Mexico.
Environmentalists had criticized the proposed transfer of PNM's shares to the Navajo Transitional Energy Co., suggesting it would prevent an early closure. However, there hasn't been any willingness by the plant's majority owner — Arizona Public Service Co. — to end operations early.
New Mexico urges caution for holidays amid virus threat - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
New Mexico health officials on Wednesday warned that COVID-19 transmission rates remain high across the state and they urged people to be cautious over the holiday weekend, acknowledging that the public will need to learn to live with the virus and take action to reduce risks for older people.
The warning comes as workplace safety regulators are investigating the death of a third employee of Santa Fe's local bus system who was infected with COVID-19.
State health officials said during a virtual briefing that New Mexico's death toll since the pandemic began has reached 5,700 and that every county is experiencing high rates of spread. That's despite having a statewide mask mandate in place for public indoor spaces and a vaccination rate of more than 75% among adults. Nearly one-third of adults also have received boosters.
The officials also noted that while the omicron variant has been reported in New Mexico, delta continues to be the dominant variant in the state right now.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Christine Ross said there are several specimens that are awaiting sequencing at the state laboratory to determine if they are omicron cases and that the state is monitoring the situation closely.
Overall, she said New Mexico is sitting at what appears to be a "very high uncomfortable plateau" when it comes to COVID-19 cases. She said the surge began in July when the delta variant became prominent.
"We have been dealing with this ongoing high level of cases for several months now and we do see some decrease in our seven-day moving average most recently," she said. "We certainly hope that trend continues downward, but I think we need more time to follow that trend out and see where it's going to head."
Ross said the state's goal is to reduce risk, whether it be by encouraging vaccination, getting more people tested or reminding them about social distancing and avoiding crowds.
The state said it will be embarking on a pilot program aimed at expanding access to home tests.
In Santa Fe, the worker who died Monday was a supervisor with the city's transit department.
Stephanie Stringer, deputy cabinet secretary of operations for the state Environment Department, has said that if the state finds the city did not take steps to prevent worker exposure to COVID-19, the department can take enforcement action and seek corrective measures.
City spokesman Dave Herndon Herndon said Santa Fe follows state guidelines, provides workers with personal protective equipment and regularly cleans and sanitizes buildings and equipment.
Lawmakers want to study costs, benefits of public power - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
More than a dozen New Mexico lawmakers are petitioning state utility regulators to study the potential costs and benefits of publicly owned electrical power for the state.
The lawmakers in a petition released Tuesday said they believe public ownership of the electrical utilities that serve New Mexico likely would benefit customers, businesses and state, local and tribal governments as mandates aimed at curbing pollution and growing renewable energy development kick in over the next two decades.
The lawmakers, most of whom are liberal Democrats, want to make their case before the Public Regulation Commission during a meeting next month.
"We no longer need to trade off the environment and the economy against each other as we have abundant natural resources in New Mexico," state Sen. Liz Stefanics said in a statement. "We must look at alternative ways to structure the provision of energy so that we can meet our goals as quickly and equitably as possible."
The request comes after the Public Regulation Commission issued two major rejections involving the state's largest electric provider in recent weeks. The five elected commissioners voted unanimously against Public Service Co. of New Mexico's proposed exit from the coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant and a proposed multibillion-dollar acquisition of the investor-owned utility by global energy giant Iberdrola.
The commissioners had voiced concerns about whether the proposals were in the public interest, among other things.
Stefanics and her colleagues argue that a formal study would help determine whether implementation of public power would be in the public interest, stabilize electricity rates, generate revenues and result in the deployment of more renewable energy.
Supporters of the rejected PNM merger had argued that bringing in Iberdrola and U.S. subsidiary Avangrid would have made available more capital and boosted purchasing power that could help meet emissions benchmarks and renewable energy mandates.
But the petitioning lawmakers say that under the current model, plant ownership and energy investments by investor-owned utilities require a return on equity that often creates an incentive not to invest in energy sources with fixed capital costs and no fuel costs.
The petition points to two possible models that could be studied — a state owned and operated electric power authority with municipal and tribal local control over generation or a community choice system where investor-owned utilities maintain transmission and distribution with the option for municipal and tribal control over generation.
The lawmakers say it would be up to the New Mexico Legislature to make the ultimate decision about whether a public power retail electric service at just and reasonable rates is feasible.
"That process must begin with an understanding of what is possible," the petition states.
According to the petition, more than 2,000 communities in 49 states and several U.S. territories have a public power utility and as a whole, public power utilities have lower rates than other types of electric utilities.
The petition suggests that the study, if allowed by the commission, should also look at potential downsides such as whether public power adoption could expand the urban-rural divide or decrease market competition.
Infrastructure bill to aid US tribes with water, plumbing - By Gillian Flaccus, Felicia Fonseca and Becky Bohrer Associated Press
Erland Suppah Jr. doesn't trust what comes out of his faucet.
Each week, Suppah and his girlfriend haul a half-dozen large jugs of water from a distribution center run by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to their apartment for everything from drinking to cooking to brushing their teeth for their family of five. It's the only way they feel safe after countless boil-water notices and weekslong shutoffs on a reservation struggling with bursting pipes, failing pressure valves and a geriatric water treatment plant.
"About the only thing this water is good for is cleaning my floor and flushing down the toilet," Suppah said of the tap water in the community 100 miles southeast of Portland. "That's it."
In other, more remote tribal communities across the country, running water and indoor plumbing have never been a reality.
Now, there's a glimmer of hope in the form of a massive infrastructure bill signed last month that White House officials say represents the largest single infusion of money into Indian Country. It includes $3.5 billion for the federal Indian Health Service, which provides health care to more than 2 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives, plus pots of money through other federal agencies for water projects.
Tribal leaders say the funding, while welcome, won't make up for decades of neglect from the U.S. government, which has a responsibility to tribes under treaties and other acts to ensure access to clean water. A list of sanitation deficiencies kept by the Indian Health Service has more than 1,500 projects, including wells, septic systems, water storage tanks and pipelines. Some projects would address water contamination from uranium or arsenic.
About 3,300 homes in more than 30 rural Alaska communities lack indoor plumbing, according to a 2020 report. On the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation, about one-third of the 175,000 residents are without running water.
Residents in these places haul water for basic tasks such as washing and cooking, sometimes driving long distances to reach communal water stations. Instead of indoor bathrooms, many use outhouses or lined pails called "honey buckets" that they drag outside to empty. Some shower or do laundry at community sites known as "washeterias," but the equipment can be unreliable and the fees expensive.
"You look at two billionaires competing to fly into outer space, yet we're trying to get basic necessities in villages of interior Alaska," said PJ Simon, a former chairman of an Alaska Native nonprofit corporation called the Tanana Chiefs Conference.
Many more tribal communities have indoor plumbing but woefully inadequate facilities and delivery systems riddled with aging pipes.
The coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately hit Indian Country, further underscored the stark disparities in access to running water and sewage systems.
In Warm Springs, the water crisis has overlapped with COVID-19.
"During a worldwide pandemic, we've had a boil-water notice. How are we supposed to wash our hands? How are we supposed to sanitize our homes to disinfect, to keep our community members safe? How can we do that ... when our water isn't even clean?" said Dorothea Thurby, who oversees the distribution of free water to tribal members and food boxes to those who are quarantined.
A 2019 report by a pair of nonprofit groups, U.S. Water Alliance and Dig Deep, found Native American homes are 19 times more likely than white households to lack full plumbing. And federal officials note tribal members without indoor toilets or running water are at increased risk of respiratory tract, skin and gastrointestinal infections.
On the Navajo Nation, Eloise Sullivan uses an outhouse and often drives before dawn to beat the crowd at a water-filling station near the Arizona-Utah border to get water for the five people in her household. They use about 850 gallons a week, she estimated.
Sullivan, 56, doesn't mind hauling water, but "for the younger generation, it's like, 'Do we have to do that?'"
"It's kind of like a big issue for them," she said.
She once asked local officials what it would cost to run a water line from the closest source about 2 miles away. She said she was told $25,000 and never pursued it.
Libby Washburn, special assistant to President Joe Biden on Native American affairs, recently told tribes the infrastructure bill included enough money to complete all the projects on the Indian Health Service list. The agency said it's consulting with tribes and won't make allocation decisions before that process is over.
Until now, tribes and outside organizations have worked to address needs with their own funding, donations or federal money, including pandemic relief.
"If you live without running water, you understand the importance and the connection you have with it, deep down as a person, as a human being," said Burrell Jones, who sets up water systems and delivers water around Dilkon, Arizona, with Dig Deep's Navajo Water Project. "You can't exist without water."
Andrew Marks recently moved back to Tanana, a community of about 190 people in Alaska's interior. He initially relied on a washeteria but found the equipment unreliable. He now has running water and plumbing where he lives but hauls water for family members who don't.
"I believe if we had more people with water, more people connected to the grid, it would drastically improve their life," he said.
In Oregon, tribal officials have handed out about 3 million gallons of water — almost all of it donated — from a decommissioned elementary school on the reservation. A steady stream of residents pick up a combined 600 gallons of water a day from the building. Former classrooms overflow with five-gallon containers and cases of bottled water.
"The infrastructure bill brought joy to my heart because now it gives me hope — hope that it's going to be repaired," said Dan Martinez, the tribes' emergency manager, who expects to receive federal funds to replace underground pipes and address the 40-year-old treatment plant.
"If you came to work one day and someone said, 'Hey, you need to go and find water for a community of 6,000 people.' ... I mean, where do you start?'"
The money won't provide immediate relief. Funding to the Indian Health Service is supposed to be distributed over five years. There is no deadline for its use, and projects will take time to complete once started. The money won't cover operation and maintenance of the systems, a point tribes have criticized.
In Warm Springs, tribal members don't pay for their water, and proposals to charge for it are deeply unpopular. That provides little incentive for tribal members to conserve water and raises questions about how new infrastructure will be maintained.
"There are some Natives who say — and I believe this myself — 'How do you sell something you never owned? The Creator has given it to us,'" said Martinez, a tribal member.
Building out infrastructure in remote areas can be onerous, too. Most roads on the Navajo Nation are unpaved and become muddy and deeply rutted after big storms.
In Alaska, winter temperatures can fall well below zero, and construction seasons are short. Having enough people in a small community who are trained on the specifics of a water system so they can maintain it also can be a challenge, said Kaitlin Mattos, an assistant professor at Fort Lewis College in Colorado who worked on a 2020 report on water infrastructure in Alaska.
"Every bit of funding that is allocated is going to help some family, some household, which is wonderful," she said. "Whether it's enough to help every single household, I think, remains to be seen."
